The Center for International Policy released a new report
(See Bombs Versus Budgets) this month focusing on the nuke lobby — the coalition of defense
contractors and former government officials who continue to push for
costly Cold War-style nuclear stockpile and delivery systems.

Interestingly, the report references a statement by the late Senator William Proxmire, Democrat of Wisconsin, from 1969
about the revolving door of the military-industrial complex:

The easy movement of high ranking military officers into jobs with
major defense contractors and the reverse movement of top executives in
major defense contractors into high Pentagon jobs is solid evidence of
the military industrial-complex in operation. It is a real threat to
the public interest because it increases the chances of abuse . . . How
hard a bargain will officers involved in procurement planning or
specifications drive when they are one or two years from retirement and
have the example to look at of over 2,000 fellow officers doing well on
the outside after retirement?

In forty years, the problem has of course not gone away. The author
of the CIP report notes that there are scores of former government
officials working in the nuclear weapons lobby, providing it with
special access to the government that it otherwise would not have. The
report uses the following table to demonstrate this: